Ritz-Carlton President Herve Humler's Leadership, Culture And Customer Service Secrets

It’s been a back-to-our-roots scenario lately at The Ritz-Carlton Hotel Company, where Herve Humler, part of the original executive team that more than 30 years ago created the hotel brand as we know it, has settled in at the helm, replacing an “imported” CEO, Simon Cooper, who stepped down in 2010.

The approach Humler has been taking to his new position is intriguing on a cultural and leadership level: Humler has been on nonstop, round-the-globe mission of exhorting his managers and frontline employees to fully realize the vision of the heady early days when that original group of hospitality executives joined forces to create what they envisioned as a worldwide luxury chain focused on serving “even the unexpressed wishes” of its guests, and doing so through fully-empowered “Ladies and Gentlemen” (as the employees of Ritz-Carlton proudly refer to themselves).

Herve Humler, President and COO, The Ritz-Carlton Hotel Company

Humler’s cultural initiative comes at a time when the hotel company has been expanding rapidly. Ritz-Carlton now operates 88 hotels worldwide that include such innovations as the “world’s highest hotel” in Hong Kong and the new, ultra-private, ultra-luxury Ritz-Carlton Reserve concept.

It also coincides with a visible reworking of the brand’s vibe: hotels worldwide have been undergoing design overhauls to better reflect their local surroundings, Ritz-Carlton has been relaxing its famously “proper” employee language and grooming standards, and at many locations there has been a revamp of its foodservice and guest programming to better reflect the authenticity and adventure that customers are looking for today.

I spoke with Mr. Humler about leadership, company culture, employee empowerment and the changing expectations of customers today.

Micah Solomon: The easiest way I know to terrify an audience of business leaders is to describe to them how the Ritz-Carlton allows any employee in your organization to fix any guest problem, without asking for permission–even if it costs up to $2000 to do so. Yet at The Ritz-Carlton you continue to offer this responsibility and autonomy to your employees every day of the week and it works out very well. Can you talk with me about this?

Herve Humler, President and Chief Operating Officer, The Ritz-Carlton Hotel Company: This is what we’ve always called here at The Ritz-Carlton, for decades before it became a popular buzzword in business, “empowerment.“ Empowerment is often manifested as the power of our employees to break away from the routine. This requires attention to seek out the moments where a break from the routine brings value to the guest: If you are server, you listen to the customer, and if he expresses a desire for something different from what you are currently doing now, you cater to it. If you are an [maintenance] engineer and you are painting the wall or changing a light bulb and a customer says "Hey, how are you? I need to get to the airplane,” you can stop what you’re doing and say "Sir, I am going to take you to the airplane.”

The attitude I strive to get across to my employees is this: “You are not servants, because unlike a servant, I want you to be engaged with the customer—you have a brain, you have a heart and I want you to use them.” This is why we say, and have always said, that we are ladies and gentlemen serving ladies and gentlemen. We mean this. I believe in the power of recognition and empowerment leading to great employee engagement. And employee engagement is critical to guest engagement. Employee empowerment and recognition is the core of our culture and how we achieve outstanding service.

Solomon: The focus on core values and other essential service standards at The Ritz-Carlton is clearly much more than lip service: My impression is that every employee in your organization–and I mean housekeepers as well as executives–knows every one of your brand's philosophical principles by heart. Yet there are by contrast so many other companies that also have mission statements, but theirs become nothing more than paper on the wall. Can you talk about this?

Humler: I encounter executives sometimes from other companies who tell me, “Oh, yes. We have a mission statement–it’s about four or five pages long. It’s somewhere in the CEO’s office, and accumulates a thicker layer of dust every year.” The problem in these cases is that the vision or the mission of the company isn’t shared with the employees! The executive attitude they’re showing here is that employees don’t work to create excellence, they only work for a paycheck.

I disagree with this wholeheartedly–in fact it makes me feel, in cases like this, that it’s the CEOs who should be reformed today, not the employees. It’s what you make of your employees. My feeling is that, by and large, there are no bad soldiers, only bad officers.

Here at The Ritz-Carlton, everything is well-defined and thoroughly communicated. Our concept of service is not only well-defined, but through our Gold Standards, daily lineup [see my article here for an in-depth look at daily lineup], and continuous training, we re-energize our ladies and gentlemen to serve our guests consistently.

They’re the absolute opposite here of just being words on a piece of paper. They are brought to life by the employees. At The Ritz-Carlton, we have 16 service values and three steps of service, and each one of our 40,000 ladies and gentlemen know them. They learn during orientation, and the values are then reinforced every day of the year at Lineup. We even provide them on a laminated card that each Lady and Gentleman has on their person for reference.

It is my job, and the job of every leader in this organization, to remind ourselves and those who work for us daily that we are not in the business of selling hotel rooms or F&B [food and beverage]. We are in the business of providing exceptional service. The privilege of serving our guests is the highest priority of The Ritz-Carlton Hotel Company. If we do that well, the rest of our job is easy and we will by default sell rooms.

Energizing a global workforce has to be a daily commitment, and is the reason that we conduct lineup three times per day, every day, all over the world. We remind our ladies and gentlemen what is important to our customers and reinforce this regularly through onboarding, training and regular communications like daily line-ups, repetition is important. This keeps it alive throughout the company: The same service value we're reinforcing in New York will be focused on in Los Angeles and Beijing as well, that very same day. It's important to our success that we commit ourselves every day, day in and day out. Not whenever we want, just always. We pledge to commit ourselves to deliver excellence to our guests every day.

Solomon: How are customers changing? And how is Ritz-Carlton changing with them?

Humler: Luxury travelers have long welcomed personalized services that make logistics that little bit more manageable, or make unfamiliar experiences more relatable. At the same time, technology has made travelers increasingly expectant of a certain level of personalization, from hotel recommendations to endlessly customizable leisure packages.

Informality/approachable luxury is the standard today. Certainly the time of the jacket and the tie is over, it's finished. We're not going to dictate to the customer what they should or should not wear. We want them to feel comfortable.

Another area where we’ve become less formal is in authentic, unscripted conversation and interactions with the customer. In the early days when putting together this hotel company and growing it globally, we scripted almost everything. You’d hear ’my pleasure’ repeated everywhere you went in the hotel because that was part of the script. We have evolved from that today and now encourage our employees to be themselves. To conduct interactions with utmost respect and courtesy, but in a way that it natural to their personality and the warmth of their caring natures.

Customers today have an expectation of seamless service, in part because of the online experience and other technological factors. It’s important that we provide them with this seamless service– all of the element of the luxury hotel experience must integrate and flow together, from the planning process when they make the reservation, to when they depart the hotel.

Being a part of the consumer conversation and responsive to their comments, suggestions and requests can bring great benefits. It is the intrinsic value and deeper relationships with a brand that customers are looking for today. The luxury affluent chooses the brands they want to interact with and support, seeking out companies and brands that can simplify and improve their lives and make their experiences richer.

Clearly, the needs and expectations of luxury travelers grow as rapidly as the development of technology. We created a Ritz-Carlton mobile app [more about the Ritz-Carlton's new mobile app in my article here] and are soon introducing Phase Two of the app which will have a whole wave of new features for seamless service that include use of a GPS function to deliver your drink to you anywhere in a resort.

The goals of our guests are changing as well. It was only eight or ten years ago that luxury customers traveled around the globe to accumulate possession: furs in Asia, porcelain in Europe, the carpet in the Middle East or in India. Today they travel to collect experiences. They want to be the first to reach a new place and engage with something new.

Solomon: Many of my readers are entrepreneurs and business leaders themselves. Is there anything else you want to share with them about your leadership style, organizational culture, or anything else that would be helpful to them in their own organizations?

Humler: Superior, seamless service doesn’t take a rocket scientist to work out – and yet it is the force behind some of the most successful brands in the world. As a business leader and knowing that time is the most precious commodity, opportunities to create excellence in the most basic form are in their abundance.

My biggest joy in life is helping others succeed. I have everything I want in life but through this great organization I am able to help our Ladies and Gentlemen succeed in so many ways for themselves and for our organization. It is a gift I value and appreciate and an attribute I acknowledge as a sign of good leaders within our and other organizations.